Free The Morganville Vampires Collection (The Morganville Vampires #1-4) by Rachel Caine

she went down the trash chute, like her stupid laundry.’
    ‘But—’ Jen’s feeble protest. ‘I don’t want to go down to the—’
    She would, though. Claire suppressed a wild grin – mostly because it still hurt too much to do that – and made it out of the dorm.

    The sunlight felt amazing. It felt like…safety.
    Claire took a deep breath of hot afternoon air, and walked around the corner to wait for Kim. The heat was brutal out against the sunbaked walls – suffocating. She squinted against the sun and saw the distant glitter of Eve’s car, parked all the way at the back. Even hotter in there, she guessed, and wondered if Eve had got out of that Goth-required leather coat yet.
    And just as she was thinking that, she saw a shadow fall across hers from behind, and half turned, but it was too late. Something soft and dark muffled her vision and clogged her mouth and nose, and pressure around her head yanked her off-balance. She screamed, or tried to, but somebody punched her in the stomach, which took care of the screaming and most of the breathing, and Claire saw a weak, watery sunshine through the weave of the cloth over her face, and shadows, and then everything got dark. Not that she fainted, or anything like that, although she was wanting to, badly.
    The hot pressure of the sun went away, and then she was being dragged and carried into someplace dark and quiet.
    Then down a flight of stairs.
    When the moving stopped, she heard breathing and whispers, sounds of more than a few people, and thenshe was shoved backward, hard, and fell off-balance onto a cold concrete floor. The impact stunned her, and by the time she clawed her way out of the bag that had been jammed onto her head – a black backpack, apparently – she found there was a whole circle of girls standing around her.
    She had no idea where this room was. Some kind of storage room, maybe, in the basement. It was crammed with stuff – suitcases, boxes labelled with names, all kinds of things. Some of the boxes had collapsed and spilt out pale guts of old clothes. It smelt like moulding paper, and she sneezed helplessly when her frantic gasps filled her mouth and nose with dust.
    A couple of girls giggled. Most didn’t do anything, and didn’t look very happy to be there, either. Resigned, Claire guessed. Glad it wasn’t them lying on the floor.
    Monica stepped out of the corner.
    ‘Well,’ she said, and put her hands on her hips. ‘Look what the cats dragged in.’ She flashed Claire a cold toothpaste-ad smile, as if the rest of them weren’t even here. ‘You ran away, little mouse. And just when we were starting to have fun .’
    Claire faked more sneezing, lots of it, and Monica backed away in distaste. Faking sneezing, Claire discovered, wasn’t as easy as she’d thought. It hurt. But it provided time and cover for her to pull the phoneout of her pocket, cover it with her body, and frantically punch 2.
    She pressed SEND and shoved it between two boxes, hoping the blue glow of the buttons wouldn’t attract Monica’s attention. Hoping Shane wouldn’t be iPoding or Xboxing and ignoring the phone. Hoping…
    Just hoping.
    ‘Oh, for God’s sake. Get her up!’ Monica ordered. Her Monickettes sprang forward, Jen taking one of Claire’s arms, Gina the other. They hauled her up to her feet and held her there.
    Monica pulled the hood back from Claire’s bruised face and smiled again, taking in the damage. ‘Damn, freak, you look like hell. Does it hurt?’
    ‘What did I ever do to you?’ Claire blurted. She was scared, but she was angry, too. Furious. There were seven girls standing around doing nothing because they were scared, and of what? Monica ? What the hell gave the Monicas the right to run the world?
    ‘You know exactly what you did. You tried to make me look stupid,’ Monica said.
    ‘ Tried? ’ Claire shot back, which was dumb, but she couldn’t stop the impulse. It got her hit in the face. Hard. Right on top of the first